In a statement on its website, the Taliban said “sick-minded American savages” committed a “blood-soaked and inhumane crime” in the Panjwayi district of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, according to The Associated Press.

The U.S. has said the shootings were conducted by a lone American soldier who is now in custody.

However, some Afghans doubt this explanation because the houses involved in the shooting were more than a mile apart.

In a public statement Monday, Afghanistan’s Parliament demanded that the United States punish the “culprits” and have them tried publicly.

“We seriously demand and expect that the government of the United States punish the culprits and try them in a public trial before the people of Afghanistan,” the parliament said, according to Agence France-Presse.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the incident did not represent “who we are.”

“Let me say that like many Americans, I was shocked and saddened by the killings of innocent Afghan villages this weekend,” Clinton said at the United Nations Monday. “We send our condolences to families who have lost their loved ones, and to the people of Afghanistan. This is not who we are, and the United States is committed to seeing that those responsible are held accountable.”

On Sunday, the soldier reportedly left his base and entered three homes, firing on those inside. Of the 16 civilians killed, 9 of them were children, according to The New York Times. The soldier allegedly set fire to some of the individuals that were killed.

The soldier, an Army staff sergeant, was 38 years old and married with two children. An 11-year veteran of the military, he had served three tours of duty in Iraq and was deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December, military officials told the newspaper.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made an unannounced visit to German troops in Afghanistan on Monday, Reuters reported. Merkel reportedly offered Afghan President Hamid Karzai condolences over the U.S. soldier’s act.

The shooting could stir up tensions at a time where anger is already running high from last month, when U.S. troops were found to have burned Qurans in a pit used to incinerate garbage.

The Quran burnings sparked violent protests across the country, and some Afghan forces turned their guns on American troops, killing six.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for several attacks after the Qurans were burned.

The White House announced Monday that Sunday’s event would not affect the timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal.

“The person that was involved obviously has to be brought to justice and brought to justice quickly,” Santorum said, according to CNN. “[S]omeone obviously lost it and you’ve got to obviously do the reviews to find out what happened.”

Santorum always took aim at the president’s war strategy, in particular Obama’s decision to put a timeline in place for troop withdrawal.

“The president putting a timeline in place has made a very winnable operation very, very difficult,” the former Pennsylvania senator said. “It continues to unravel because the president has given something to the enemy that we should have been able to deny them, which is hope.”